Reply to:  The Mystery of the Haunted Rationalist
Followup to:  Don't Believe You'll Self-Deceive

Should a rationalist ever find themselves trying hard to believe something?

You may be tempted to answer "No", because "trying to believe" sounds so stereotypical of Dark Side Epistemology.  You may be tempted to reply, "Surely, if you have to try hard to believe something, it isn't worth believing."

But Yvain tells us that - even though he knows damn well, on one level, that spirits and other supernatural things are not to be found in the causal closure we name "reality" - and even though he'd bet $100 against $10,000 that an examination would find no spirits in a haunted house - he's pretty sure he's still scared of haunted houses.

Maybe it's okay for Yvain to try a little harder to accept that there are no ghosts, since he already knows that there are no ghosts?

In my very early childhood I was lucky enough to read a book from the children's section of a branch library, called "The Mystery of Something Hill" or something.  In which one of the characters says, roughly:  "There are two ways to believe in ghosts.  One way is to fully believe in ghosts, to look for them and talk about them.  But the other way is to half-believe - to make fun of the idea of ghosts, and talk scornfully of ghosts; but to break into a cold sweat when you hear a bump in the night, or be afraid to enter a graveyard."